7 ms·

How to Survive a Critique: A Guide to Giving and Receiving Feedback

116 points by mch82 6y ago

mch82 6y ago
A big part of professional work is peer review. This guide to critique is written for design students, but is relevant to engineers. AIGA (professional association for design) has a number of other search results for “critique”.
xtracto 6y ago
> Use the “hamburger method” If you are a manager or someone in a position of "power" no, please don't. This has to be one of the most overrated and misused feedback methods. The problem with giving sandwich/hamburguer whatever feedback, is that you are undervaluing positive feedback. After you do this a lot of times, every time you want to give positive feedback to the person, she will be expecting the negative part, she will grow weary of your feedback and wont value the positive feedback. Better learn how to give effective feedback ( https://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/giving-effective-feedback https://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/giving-effective-feedb... highly recommended) whether it is positive or negative. And teach your collaborators to receive the feedback as what it is: just feedback.
- roland35 6y ago
  I am also not a fan of the hamburger method. I think it seems disingenuous, plus most people are aware of it too. Personally if I get negative feedback I would rather hear what I can do to make it better than hearing an arbitrary good thing to make up for the bad thing.
  - svrb 6y ago
    Indeed, the real value of the hamburger method seems to be in making it difficult for the recipient to engage in productive conversation about the negative feedback, which the giver may find difficult.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  I don't personally think the "hamburger method" is overrated (partly since I often see it criticised), even if it is cliché, and even if there are joke examples of taking it to an extreme. Feedback is improved by saying what you liked about someone's approach - by giving positive reinforcement to the parts that you liked and distinguishing the parts that would benefit from improvement. Maybe closer to my rule of thumb would be: 1. give genuine positive feedback whenever it is possible to do so, and negative feedback whenever it is necessary. 2. all negative feedback/criticism should be constructive. It should regard only how things could be improved when related situations comes up in the future (and in an achievable way). 3. on the receiving end, I also think you should demand that negative feedback is constructive - rather than wallowing in the negativity, you can normally train people to give you more useful and productive feedback. If the problem is something you can't do anything about, it's useful to identify that and reflect it back. People are much more receptive to constructive negative feedback if they know that you're recognising their positive efforts and have understood a more complete context. I've observed that people who say they dislike the hamburger method will still respond positively to it, compared to bluntly negative feedback.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    A 'hamburger' tries to stuff all of the food groups into a single serving. What you're really after is a balanced diet of positive feedback, negative feedback, and neutral interactions. If you will, non-negative interactions are sort of the fiber that is missing from most of these diets. Being around someone where every interaction is going to be intense, regardless of whether it's a positive or negative interaction, is just exhausting.
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    Where the hamburger gets ridiculous is when it's three totally unrelated items. The best criticism in my mind shows the path to success. So instead of: 1. You make a great cheese dip at office parties. 2. You gotta stop flaming people in code reviews. 3. Great presentation last week. Make it more like: 1. You're clearly committed to the project's success. 2. But the conversation on ticket #347 was too hostile, please don't call anyone an ignoramus again. 3. The way you handled #252 helped us settle a disagreement and reach a good compromise quickly. Showing the first step and general direction back to success is good. The next part is when it's over, it's over and not to hold grudges or play favorites, and hopefully get people to trust that you won't.
- gowld 6y ago
  A better alternative to "hamburger" feedback is: 1. Express appreciation for effort already investment, to show that the effort was well-spent. 2. Critique the work. 3. Express encouragement for future effort, to show that the recipient can solve these problems and succeed. Spamming 3 unrelated forced comments in a weird order just confused the recipient, making them not understand which of the comments is more important. That's only superficially like "positive comment, negative comment, positive comment", but below the surface similarity is where the important difference is.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    I love this! This isn't about some ratio of good to bad. It's about engaging with the individual and encouraging more of what you want to see. Telling someone something is bad is helpful-ish. Telling someone the parts that are great -- that you want to see replicated again or extended in the future -- that's useful. And rewarding to everyone involved. It's really only useful to give negative feedback if it's something that SHOULD NOT happen. Otherwise, learning to accept people where they are in life goes a long way.
- corty 6y ago
  The problem with the hamburger method is that it is recognizably dishonest. Everyone knows the structure by now, everyone knows that the positives at either end are just there to cushion the negative. So positive feedback in a hamburger will not only be undervalued, it won't be believed at all.
- throwaway987978 6y ago
  I love the Manager Tools feedback model. It's succinct and the importance is on addressing behavioural change over time rather than one particular incident.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
supernova87a 6y ago
I think a different mindset to adopt is the understanding that: people don't bother giving feedback to those who they don't care about or have to work with again. Sometimes this applies more or less depending on the particular company and culture / working relationship, but in general it's a good thing to understand. (This also tends to happen more / better in high-functioning environments, or work where it's project-based and you have choices about who to continue working with next.) If someone has written you off, they won't go to the trouble of creating, thinking about, and giving feedback. Because good feedback takes effort. It's a obligation of the other person to put thought into it, so you should learn to appreciate it. In addition to the other advice about delivering it properly, giving concrete examples, etc. etc. Give feedback as a gift to others, and receive it in that way.
- fairity 6y ago
  > People don't bother giving feedback to those who they don't care about or have to work with again. This mindset is basically trying to cast good intentions on the criticizer to reduce the sting of the critique. I don't like these mindsets because they aren't reliably true. While some managers or teammates will give you feedback with good intentions in mind, others will critique you out of frustration and negative emotions. Instead of tricking yourself into thinking that everyone is acting with your best interests in mind, why not accept reality. The path forward is to embrace the fact that you can't please everyone. Instead, have a deep understanding of what your goals and values are. And, act accordingly. How others react or judge your actions are only important insofar as they help you achieve your goals or align your actions with your values.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Well, as I said, it depends on the company -- and also what level of work you're doing and what level of colleagues you have. Some situations, yes, your feedback is being given to document your underperformance. I'm in general not talking about that kind of feedback. At that stage, my comment (and probably the entire article about how to give constructive feedback) is inapplicable. For feedback that is at the level of (and people operating at the level of) "you're doing good work, here's how to improve", then I think my statements are true. If you're getting put on a PIP, then you've got deeper problems, and sure, your feedback is not a gift. No subtle gift is going to help you at that point.
dredmorbius 6y ago
TFA renders blank w/o JS. https://archive.is/GMZs4 https://archive.is/GMZs4
tomc1985 6y ago
Learning to take a critique is the number one skill for someone out of art school. I wish that skill were more broadly taught.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
Come on surely this is a joke. What's next, how to survive getting stuck at a red light? Snowflake syndrome is rampant...
- mch82 6y ago
  Are you commenting on the article or the headline? The article isn’t about surviving a critique with feelings intact. The article is about how to run an effective design critique, which is a peer review method common in creative professions. Many engineering conversations are design conversations. Yet, as engineers, we are given relatively little training in how to critique & evaluate product/architecture design decisions.
KineticLensman 6y ago
> Make actionable suggestions This is key. I had a manager one whose document review comments inevitably descended into snark, and often included a "this is wrong, do it again". This was frustrating and sometimes insulting. I am actually quite good at report writing, and I hate to think what their reviews would have been like if I was a junior, still learning or not a native English speaker. Another good way of doing reviews is to have a formal checklist supported by an agreed style guide. My last company had good, usable templates (e.g. for bid and document reviews), with an objective scoring system based on a red-amber-green traffic-light system. The size / complexity of the checklist obviously varied depending on the size of the project or deliverable. Using these largely depersonalised the review, and also helped avoid reviewers projecting their own personal preferences. It was also recommended to get a peer review before submitting a doc for formal review. This was put in place because some authors didn't do any checking at all before submitting and those of us who did formal reviews were swamped by trivial errors. Often just before a doc was due to be submitted. In cases where work includes an element of novelty, the reviewer should be involved as early as possible (almost as soon as bidding starts, ideally) so that the types of review (and their costs) can be factored into project costs. There is nothing worse for a project than a reviewer who arbitrarily changes the review goal posts after a project has started. Ideally, the reviewer shouldn't be the person who formally authorises an artefact for release. They instead present a recommendation for release and / or rework to management, who then decide what to actually do. This allows the reviewers to maintain independence and leaves the blame with management if a risk that was predicted by the reviewer but discounted by management actually manifests. This of course requires a suitable corporate culture.
fersarr 6y ago
Since we are on the topic of feedback, this web app allows you to get anonymous feedback: https://feedfeedback.com/ https://feedfeedback.com/
TiredGuy 6y ago
If you want to read further about this subject, I highly recommend a book called Discussing Design [1] which goes into how/when/why to give and receive design feedback effectively. It's a pretty easy read and has some fun illustrations by one of the authors. It's one of my favorite design books in general since I believe it's a pretty important subject which can easily apply to other types of knowledge work. [1] http://www.discussingdesign.com/ http://www.discussingdesign.com/

116 points by mch82 6y ago

A big part of professional work is peer review. This guide to critique is written for design students, but is relevant to engineers. AIGA (professional association for design) has a number of other search results for “critique”.

xtracto 6y ago

> Use the “hamburger method” If you are a manager or someone in a position of "power" no, please don't. This has to be one of the most overrated and misused feedback methods. The problem with giving sandwich/hamburguer whatever feedback, is that you are undervaluing positive feedback. After you do this a lot of times, every time you want to give positive feedback to the person, she will be expecting the negative part, she will grow weary of your feedback and wont value the positive feedback. Better learn how to give effective feedback ( https://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/giving-effective-feedback https://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/giving-effective-feedb... highly recommended) whether it is positive or negative. And teach your collaborators to receive the feedback as what it is: just feedback.

roland35 6y ago
I am also not a fan of the hamburger method. I think it seems disingenuous, plus most people are aware of it too. Personally if I get negative feedback I would rather hear what I can do to make it better than hearing an arbitrary good thing to make up for the bad thing.
- svrb 6y ago
  Indeed, the real value of the hamburger method seems to be in making it difficult for the recipient to engage in productive conversation about the negative feedback, which the giver may find difficult.
throwaway2245 6y ago
I don't personally think the "hamburger method" is overrated (partly since I often see it criticised), even if it is cliché, and even if there are joke examples of taking it to an extreme. Feedback is improved by saying what you liked about someone's approach - by giving positive reinforcement to the parts that you liked and distinguishing the parts that would benefit from improvement. Maybe closer to my rule of thumb would be: 1. give genuine positive feedback whenever it is possible to do so, and negative feedback whenever it is necessary. 2. all negative feedback/criticism should be constructive. It should regard only how things could be improved when related situations comes up in the future (and in an achievable way). 3. on the receiving end, I also think you should demand that negative feedback is constructive - rather than wallowing in the negativity, you can normally train people to give you more useful and productive feedback. If the problem is something you can't do anything about, it's useful to identify that and reflect it back. People are much more receptive to constructive negative feedback if they know that you're recognising their positive efforts and have understood a more complete context. I've observed that people who say they dislike the hamburger method will still respond positively to it, compared to bluntly negative feedback.
- hinkley 6y ago
  A 'hamburger' tries to stuff all of the food groups into a single serving. What you're really after is a balanced diet of positive feedback, negative feedback, and neutral interactions. If you will, non-negative interactions are sort of the fiber that is missing from most of these diets. Being around someone where every interaction is going to be intense, regardless of whether it's a positive or negative interaction, is just exhausting.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  Where the hamburger gets ridiculous is when it's three totally unrelated items. The best criticism in my mind shows the path to success. So instead of: 1. You make a great cheese dip at office parties. 2. You gotta stop flaming people in code reviews. 3. Great presentation last week. Make it more like: 1. You're clearly committed to the project's success. 2. But the conversation on ticket #347 was too hostile, please don't call anyone an ignoramus again. 3. The way you handled #252 helped us settle a disagreement and reach a good compromise quickly. Showing the first step and general direction back to success is good. The next part is when it's over, it's over and not to hold grudges or play favorites, and hopefully get people to trust that you won't.
gowld 6y ago
A better alternative to "hamburger" feedback is: 1. Express appreciation for effort already investment, to show that the effort was well-spent. 2. Critique the work. 3. Express encouragement for future effort, to show that the recipient can solve these problems and succeed. Spamming 3 unrelated forced comments in a weird order just confused the recipient, making them not understand which of the comments is more important. That's only superficially like "positive comment, negative comment, positive comment", but below the surface similarity is where the important difference is.
- musingsole 6y ago
  I love this! This isn't about some ratio of good to bad. It's about engaging with the individual and encouraging more of what you want to see. Telling someone something is bad is helpful-ish. Telling someone the parts that are great -- that you want to see replicated again or extended in the future -- that's useful. And rewarding to everyone involved. It's really only useful to give negative feedback if it's something that SHOULD NOT happen. Otherwise, learning to accept people where they are in life goes a long way.
corty 6y ago
The problem with the hamburger method is that it is recognizably dishonest. Everyone knows the structure by now, everyone knows that the positives at either end are just there to cushion the negative. So positive feedback in a hamburger will not only be undervalued, it won't be believed at all.
throwaway987978 6y ago
I love the Manager Tools feedback model. It's succinct and the importance is on addressing behavioural change over time rather than one particular incident.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

supernova87a 6y ago

I think a different mindset to adopt is the understanding that: people don't bother giving feedback to those who they don't care about or have to work with again. Sometimes this applies more or less depending on the particular company and culture / working relationship, but in general it's a good thing to understand. (This also tends to happen more / better in high-functioning environments, or work where it's project-based and you have choices about who to continue working with next.) If someone has written you off, they won't go to the trouble of creating, thinking about, and giving feedback. Because good feedback takes effort. It's a obligation of the other person to put thought into it, so you should learn to appreciate it. In addition to the other advice about delivering it properly, giving concrete examples, etc. etc. Give feedback as a gift to others, and receive it in that way.

fairity 6y ago
> People don't bother giving feedback to those who they don't care about or have to work with again. This mindset is basically trying to cast good intentions on the criticizer to reduce the sting of the critique. I don't like these mindsets because they aren't reliably true. While some managers or teammates will give you feedback with good intentions in mind, others will critique you out of frustration and negative emotions. Instead of tricking yourself into thinking that everyone is acting with your best interests in mind, why not accept reality. The path forward is to embrace the fact that you can't please everyone. Instead, have a deep understanding of what your goals and values are. And, act accordingly. How others react or judge your actions are only important insofar as they help you achieve your goals or align your actions with your values.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Well, as I said, it depends on the company -- and also what level of work you're doing and what level of colleagues you have. Some situations, yes, your feedback is being given to document your underperformance. I'm in general not talking about that kind of feedback. At that stage, my comment (and probably the entire article about how to give constructive feedback) is inapplicable. For feedback that is at the level of (and people operating at the level of) "you're doing good work, here's how to improve", then I think my statements are true. If you're getting put on a PIP, then you've got deeper problems, and sure, your feedback is not a gift. No subtle gift is going to help you at that point.

dredmorbius 6y ago

TFA renders blank w/o JS. https://archive.is/GMZs4 https://archive.is/GMZs4

tomc1985 6y ago

Learning to take a critique is the number one skill for someone out of art school. I wish that skill were more broadly taught.

deeeeplearning 6y ago

Come on surely this is a joke. What's next, how to survive getting stuck at a red light? Snowflake syndrome is rampant...

mch82 6y ago
Are you commenting on the article or the headline? The article isn’t about surviving a critique with feelings intact. The article is about how to run an effective design critique, which is a peer review method common in creative professions. Many engineering conversations are design conversations. Yet, as engineers, we are given relatively little training in how to critique & evaluate product/architecture design decisions.

KineticLensman 6y ago

> Make actionable suggestions This is key. I had a manager one whose document review comments inevitably descended into snark, and often included a "this is wrong, do it again". This was frustrating and sometimes insulting. I am actually quite good at report writing, and I hate to think what their reviews would have been like if I was a junior, still learning or not a native English speaker. Another good way of doing reviews is to have a formal checklist supported by an agreed style guide. My last company had good, usable templates (e.g. for bid and document reviews), with an objective scoring system based on a red-amber-green traffic-light system. The size / complexity of the checklist obviously varied depending on the size of the project or deliverable. Using these largely depersonalised the review, and also helped avoid reviewers projecting their own personal preferences. It was also recommended to get a peer review before submitting a doc for formal review. This was put in place because some authors didn't do any checking at all before submitting and those of us who did formal reviews were swamped by trivial errors. Often just before a doc was due to be submitted. In cases where work includes an element of novelty, the reviewer should be involved as early as possible (almost as soon as bidding starts, ideally) so that the types of review (and their costs) can be factored into project costs. There is nothing worse for a project than a reviewer who arbitrarily changes the review goal posts after a project has started. Ideally, the reviewer shouldn't be the person who formally authorises an artefact for release. They instead present a recommendation for release and / or rework to management, who then decide what to actually do. This allows the reviewers to maintain independence and leaves the blame with management if a risk that was predicted by the reviewer but discounted by management actually manifests. This of course requires a suitable corporate culture.

fersarr 6y ago

Since we are on the topic of feedback, this web app allows you to get anonymous feedback: https://feedfeedback.com/ https://feedfeedback.com/

TiredGuy 6y ago

If you want to read further about this subject, I highly recommend a book called Discussing Design [1] which goes into how/when/why to give and receive design feedback effectively. It's a pretty easy read and has some fun illustrations by one of the authors. It's one of my favorite design books in general since I believe it's a pretty important subject which can easily apply to other types of knowledge work. [1] http://www.discussingdesign.com/ http://www.discussingdesign.com/